Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), the biggest platinum company, paid chief executive Chris Griffith more than double his peer at the next largest producer last year before a strike that crippled both companies’ output.
Griffith earned R17.6 million in salary, benefits, bonuses, shares and other pay, Amplats said in its annual report.
Impala Platinum (Implats) handed chief executive Terence Goodlace R7.5m in salary and benefits in fiscal 2013.
Amplats, Implats and Lonmin, the third-largest producer, are struggling with a strike by workers seeking a more than doubling of basic wages for the lowest-paid underground workers to R12 500 a month.
The walk-out is costing the industry about R200m a day in lost revenue, according to the Chamber of Mines. The stoppage began on January 23.
Amplats reported earnings a share of R5.56 for last year after a loss of R5.62 a year before. It produced 2.3 million refined ounces of platinum.
Implats’s earnings a share fell by 52 percent in fiscal 2013 to R3.30. Goodlace will get no adjustment to his pay this year, and Griffith a 6 percent rise on his R6.7m basic salary last year.
The total pay of Lonmin chief executive Ben Magara was £703 167 (R13.2m) in the three months to September last year, according to the company’s annual report. Magara was hired as the replacement for Ian Farmer, the previous chief, from July.
Negotiators for producers resumed talks yesterday at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration to try to end the strike after an offer of a pay increase of as much as 9 percent was rejected by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union. Amplats told strikers last week that they had lost more pay in three weeks than potential gains from higher wages.
The lowest paid would lose R4 700 of wages in the three weeks, the company said last week. Back-dated pay from July, when the previous wage deal expired, would be R4 244 under Amplats’s offer, it said.
Shares in Implats sank 1.86 percent to R120.76 yesterday, Amplats fell 2.34 percent to R454.62 and Lonmin shed 1.73 percent to R58.41. - Bloomberg